Scripture Engagement

A lot of our work these days is with unreached people groups: those, often smaller groups that have very few believers, and no viable church (i.e. gatherings of believers). If they do have meetings they are often in homes, and might even be persecuted - raided as in the days of Pastor Wurmbrand and Brother Andrew. Since there is no viable church it is difficult, sometimes, to know how to get going in Scripture engagement work, including translation. Probably the ideal is to have some mission workers involved, and work alongside them. If they aren't available or can't be found then, or even so, a good way forward is oral storying, or producing audio and video series based on Scripture. Either way you need to design a story set. This is a set of stories that fulfils two criteria: It covers the main points of the Bible (not just the New Testament) such as creation, fall, the calling of Abraham, Abraham and Isaac and the ram that God provides as a sacrifice, the life of Moses, ...

It seems to me that we spend a lot of time talking about partnership, but sometimes our language betrays our true affiliation. We feel we belong to one organisation, and work in partnership with another, but can easily say things like: 'That's not our project it belongs to <organisation name>.' Or: 'We don't have any personnel in that project, apart from a consultant who visits regularly.' (!) If <organisation name> is a partner organisation, in what sense is it not 'our' project (in the collective sense of the word)? And if we have a consultant giving advice to that project and approving their translations for publication, how are we not involved? Partnership is one of the Eight Conditions , albeit the last (but not the least). It is only in last place because Wayne Dye added it after the other conditions, and in a sense it holds all of them together. Without partnership our efforts are in vain. In any case the true owners of ...